


Your Heart Understood Mine

by akamarykate



Category: Little Women (1994)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Epistolary, F/M, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:01:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21827140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akamarykate/pseuds/akamarykate
Summary: Notes and letters, sent and unsent.
Relationships: Friedrich Bhaer/Josephine March
Comments: 10
Kudos: 57
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Your Heart Understood Mine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fmnds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fmnds/gifts).



Dear Professor Bhaer,

Thank you so much for helping to rescue my papers from the street yesterday, and for the coffee. It was such a pleasure to speak with you, and to explore your library, which is really quite impressive. Perhaps someday you will help me improve my German enough to read Goethe with you.

Sincerely,  
Miss Josephine March

* * *

Dear Professor Bhaer,

I fancy myself a writer, but I cannot conjure up the words to thank you for the gift of your Shakespeare volume. To share such a treasure is the act of a generous heart, and as the playwright himself said, "A beggar's book outworths a noble's blood."

Your gift was a bright spot in what otherwise would have been a lonely Christmas, and I lost myself reading all my favorites by firelight. I hope we can speak more about the contents of the book in the days to come.

Your friend,  
Josephine March

* * *

Dear Friedrich,

Thank you for taking me to the opera last night. The seats were deliciously clandestine, the music was transcendent, and your companionship was, quite frankly, the perfect…grace note. Votre cœur a compris le mien, or, as you would say in Germany, Dein Herz hat mein verstanden. (I hope that is right; if not, I am sure you will correct me!)

May I make so bold as to say that I hope there will be a repeat performance? I have used a small percentage of my ill-gotten gains to purchase tickets to a performance of Estelle Anna Lewis's _The King's Stratagem_ Friday next. It is in a small theater near Columbia College, so there is no expectation of fancy or formal dress. I so hope you will join me.

Your friend,  
Josephine

* * *

~~Dear Fr~~

Professor Bhaer,

Please forgive the hastiness and sloppiness of this note. I know you detest both qualities, but in this case they are unavoidable, as I am writing on the train bound for Concord. ~~My sister is near d~~

After we spoke today, I had a telegram from home. My sister has taken a turn for the worse, and I must go to her side and help my mother nurse her back to health. 

I will have much less time in the coming days to work on both my German and my stories. I am sure the latter will be a relief to you, though I do think _The Daily Volcano_ will miss my contributions, and I will certainly miss the funds they brought in. I wish I could make you see my circumstances the way I do. I write not for eternal glory, but for filthy lucre, and if you cannot understand or respect that, perhaps it is better that we part now.

This letter is not an apology for our argument, but an explanation for my absence. And I am making as much of a mess of it as I do everything. If I write to you, though, I do not have to think about the men eyeing me in the dining car or what waits for me at home. With every mile, the content of our quarrel seems less important; still, I cannot agree with your condemnation of my choices. I wish we could have stewed over it for a few days and then made up somehow, as I intended to do, but perhaps this is for the—

No, it isn't for the best. Not if Beth—

But she will not. I am going home to make sure of it. 

Do you know what Beth thinks of my writing? Beth, who is sweeter and kinder than anyone I know? She does not think it frivolous. My sister laughs and gasps at my stories, and awaits the next installments with an eager heart, even as her heart ~~fails~~ falters. And Meg--practical, stalwart Meg—she encourages me as well. She has insisted on subscribing to _The Daily Volcano_ , and even though her husband may frown upon it, she has told me she reads the stories to him to liven up their quiet evenings. They will not be quiet for long, as she is expecting her first child in a matter of months, but for now, my fripperies are entertainment enough.

I realize the opinions of my sisters are unlikely to sway a serious scholar such as yourself. But how, I ask you, are the passions and travails of Lady Violet and Rodrigo any different, or any more melodramatic, than those of Leila and Nadir?. How I wish I could sit you down over a cup of your ridiculously strong coffee and convince you that this is my art, lowly though it may be. When Beth is well—and she will be well—I will return to New York and persuade you. In the meantime, perhaps you could avail yourself to read my story with a keener eye and find, if not the literary merits, the heart and passion that you say are lacking. For it is my heart, and it is a wild thing, and it is better, at least, that you know that before we progress—

Oh, the station. So close to home and I cannot—I must—oh, Friedrich. 

I will endeavor to copy this in a neater hand and edit it with a clearer mind as time allows.

* * *

Dear Friedrich,

She's gone.

* * *

Dear Friedrich,

How can such a raging howl of grief result from the loss of the quietest, gentlest soul who ever lived? My Beth would chide me for it, and then, in her own way, soothe me. She was the only one who saw my wildness untamed and loved it, and tempered it for better purposes than running wild in the woods. 

The only one other than you. Dein Herz hat mein verstanden.

Laurie encouraged it without understanding it, I see that now; he would have joined me in my headlong runs, but you, Friedrich, would have welcomed me home with a strong cup of coffee and a fond twinkle in the depths of your eyes—

Not so fond now, I suppose.

When neither you nor my Beth was there to meet me, not even to chide, it made the world feel that much colder.

I do not regret a word of my stories, nor my defense of them, but I do regret the way we parted. Selfishly, perhaps, I miss your steady eyes and your bracing cups of coffee. Everything seems dark, and lost, and unmoored, and my wild, broken heart, which cannot express itself with proclamations as Whitman would, needs someone to howl at. One can hardly stride through the streets of Concord yowling poetry at the unforgiving sky. 

I cannot ask you to come, not after the way I left things, and the letters I did not send. I cannot even send this one. (Especially not this one, for it is as full of the raging melodrama that you so detest. But I know not how else to express my soul.)

If only you could have known my Beth, you would understand the loss I feel. I want everyone to know. Why isn't the whole world howling? How do I go on, how does life go on, in the face of this loss? She was one girl, but she was my sister. If only I could make you see—

The unfairness of it hits me at strange times—Kneading bread with Marmee, when she can stir herself to do it. Hearing girls singing in the play yard when I pass by the school. Music of any fashion. A certain turn of wind, when it comes sharply from the west, calling down fresh air from the hills. Seeing one of Mr. Dickens's books in a shop window, especially _The Pickwick Papers_. I know they are not your favorites, but Beth adored them, and laughed with me at Pickwick's adventures from the time we were very young. Meeting the Hummels at the market, when it was her kindness to them that struck her down. I have never been as good at forgiveness as Meg and Marmee and Beth herself (just ask Amy). 

I want to scream and rage at all that has been lost—the music Beth could have made, the kindness and charity that could have eased so many stricken hearts throughout Concord. The aunt she might have been. She seemed so content and brave through her illness, but I cannot help but despair at the loss of what she could have been, at the music and warmth and light that has gone out of the world. 

I am sure you do not think fondly enough of me now to forgive my angry reaction to your honest words, which I know now, and perhaps I did then, were true, but I didn't know what to do with them then. To return your honesty in kind, I must admit I still don't know what to do with them, even now. My days stretch out in loneliness and longing, but for the first time I don't know how to translate the vagaries of my heart into stories.

I am badly in need of a friend. I wish I could visit you at Mrs. Kirke's again. I wish –

(Truly, I wish I could believe I will have the courage to send this.)

* * *

Dear Friedrich, 

I hope you will forgive this intrusion after the way we left things. I'm sure Mrs. Kirke has told you by now the sad reason for my hasty departure from New York. My family needed me, and family, as you well know, is the dearest obligation of my heart.

Much has happened since I saw you last. My sister died, and everything changed. Much is still changing, myself most of all.

I know I haven't any right to ask this of you, not after my stubborn resistance toward your honest opinion. Perhaps the pages that are enclosed with this letter this will explain why I had to leave, and how that leaving, and what seems like too many others, has changed my perspective and my writing. I have found the courage you said I lacked; I have written from the depths of my soul. I want to tell the stories of what is being left behind, and the person I most want to tell them to is you. Do you not find that exceedingly strange? 

This is not greatness. It is not Whitman or Goethe or Shakespeare or Bizet. But it is my heart, and I hope you will accept it as a peace offering. Thank you for your faith in me, however awkwardly it was expressed. I hope someday we can meet again.

Sincerely,  
Josephine March

* * *

My Dearest Friedrich,

It seems silly, perhaps, to write you when I will see you soon, and when soon we will be joined together forever. But I cannot help myself. Since you left to settle your affairs in New York, I keep finding things I want to share with you, details I notice that catch at my heart, stories unfolding here that belong in the life we'll share together. This morning I was organizing the bookshelves in the library at Plumfield—Aunt March's tastes were voracious, but some titles were perhaps not appropriate for our future young students—and came across four novels in German, one of which, _Maria Schweidler, die Bernsteinhexe_ , seems to be about a young woman put on trial for witchcraft. I tried my hand at translating a random chapter, and all I can say is that Aunt March's German must have been worse than even my nascent skills, because she would have been appalled by it had she realized it contained threats of torture of the young woman. (I confess I found what I could make out of it to be equal parts horrifying and delicious. I am sure you are neither surprised or in approval, but even in its newly tamed state, my heart does find a secret thrill in such drama.) I have set the novels aside for us to use in our lessons when they resume.

Speaking of that resumption, Meg and Amy are anxious to plan our wedding. Meg has promised roses and hyacinths from her garden, though I'm sure thistles would be more appropriate for me. Amy talks constantly of French wedding customs, which I think she would like to re-enact because her own wedding was so swift and plain, and much as she and Laurie are suited for each other, I think she sometimes regrets not wearing a full cathedral train and having a dozen attendants. But that is not our way, is it? I am relying on Marmee to keep the affair simple. It will be a joyous day, but tinged with sorrow, as every day without my Beth may always be. I am so glad I will have you here with me, not merely to bear that sorrow, but to discover the joy that still waits in this world, the joy I know Beth would want us to celebrate.

I have so much more I'd like to tell you, but Meg is bringing the twins by so we can watch them learn to crawl in the ballroom before we fill it with desks for our future students. At least all this immense space will be useful, and filled with the giggles and whoops of the little ones as they make their first movements into the world. I plan to teach them to do more than crawl, of course; what kind of aunt would I be if we didn't have a proper romp around the dance floor? I do wish you could be here to see it. 

Soon. Soon, you will, and my heart will be content at last.

Dein Herz hat mein verstanden.

Hurry home, come home, to our family, who all send their best wishes, and to me, who sends you so much more. 

Your wild, loving,

Jo


End file.
